Feathers
by Applekat
Summary: Most people think I'm a little mad.  The words over the doors, the iron cookware, the silver spells painted around the windows, the dried herbs tacked and hung everywhere across my ceiling.  Some days I think they're right.
1. Ghost Pumpkins and Poison Berries

My house is full of ghosts.

That might bother some people, but it's the reason I chose to live here.

The specters mean no harm. They flutter through the air like transparent butterflies, nearly invisible except in the violet gloaming of in-between times. Sometimes you can catch a glimpse of them, out of the corner of your eye, when you are thinking of other things. They're gun-shy, don't like to be seen. Don't like strangers. They wrap around the lamps, get themselves snagged on coat-hooks and chandeliers, and then I have to stand on a stool to untangle them.

Have you ever tried to free the soul-fabric of a ghost from pointed metal?

It's not easy. Like trying to hold fog in your hands. The texture of iridescence. Swirling. Slippery. And sometimes they laugh, which is all the more disconcerting. Imagine someone laughing, very close to you, but sounding as if they are very far away, perhaps in a cathedral and sending the sound to you over a trans-Atlantic telephone wire.

It's enough to make the hairs on the back of even my neck stand up.

The first thing was the crows. They roost in the evergreens that surround my house, filling the hollow with squabbling and gossip. They darken the skies when they rise in flight, a murder in the hundreds. Maybe a thousand. Maybe more. I don't know - I've never been able to count them all, and crows have no notion of counting their own numbers. Their only concern is that they are more than the numbers the hawks have.

In this case, they've more than achieved their objective. I am but one, and they, for all intents and purposes, own this hollow between the hills. I am no threat to them, and they know it. On summer nights in the tree outside my bedroom window they discuss me, the strange hawk with no feathers, though they know I am listening. Some of the youngest are cheeky, and will hop close to steal a look, but their elders call them back with rough, croaking admonishments. The old crows know a hawk when they see one, wings or no, and even hawks with no feathers have a breaking point.

There's one more thing about the crows. Something eerie, but which doesn't particularly surprise me.

It took me three months of living here before I realized people couldn't see them. Most people can't even hear them properly. They tell me there's a mighty wind. They tell me I have too many wind-chimes in the evergreen grove. They ask if there are children living nearby, to make that laughter, and oh, it must be so wonderful for me, as a young woman, I must be in high demand for watching them, and on and on. Nevermind I may not be good with children. They hear wind-chimes and children. I hear thousands of wingbeats, an angry confrontation over chokecherries, a call of warning from eight sentries against an owl or two to the east. I hear Old Graybeak telling the chicks stories about smoke and blood.

It took me three more to realize the crows were dead.

By daylight, they look ordinary. Black, ragged, beautiful even, I suppose, in a blunt, brutal way. But the Gloaming, the Gloaming. Always the Gloaming. In twilight hours they turn phantasmagoric. They are like the ghosts, only thicker, more condensed. You can see right through the dark shifting of their feathers, deep, luminous purples and greens that flame from within. Right through to the bones, gleaming white. Fascinated, I spent the early fall dusks watching them eat, the berries bouncing around the insides of their skeletons and inevitably falling to the ground below the trees.

That's the thing though.

Berries haven't grown in this valley in several hundred years.

Tonight there are phantom pumpkins on my porch and the ghosts are feeling playful. They flicker the candles, feathering the flames, and knock over stacks of papers on the desk. Playing cards scatter across the floor, landing in suspiciously convenient poker hands. I roll my eyes as the ink bottle rocks back and forth, finally tipping on to a notebook. I throw my hands in the air.

"Fine! I'll pick it up later." As I open the front door to collect my milk bottles from the porch, the ink begins pooling into the sketch of a dragon hatchling.

Outside, my tiny porch smells richly of pumpkin. I threw my pumpkins out into the garden for the crows a month and a half ago, and the remains are frozen and buried under last night's snowfall. And yet they might sit here still, so strong are the imprints they left on my porch. This year's pumpkins had no intention of being forgotten. They ingrained themselves into the wood.

I bend to look closer at the chipped white paint of the porch railing. What I had thought might be green moss beginning to grow around the railings is in fact something quite different. Green vines, tiny leaves, even a minuscule blossom, just about to flower, wrapping quite wantonly around my porch. Growing inside the wood, or on it, I'm not sure. As if someone possessing considerable skill with a brush had painted them on, only I am certain this is not the case. As if in confirmation, one of the blossoms begins to open. Excruciatingly slowly, yes, but it opens all the same.

I glance to the sky above my clearing. The moonlight is silvering the rutted track leading to my home, lighting on the swaying fence running alongside. The winter winds have not been kind to the feeble, fraying wire that carries my electricity, and my power flickers continually from November to April.

My eyes follow the jagged line of the pine boughs upwards, until I reach the moon, huge and round and orange, rising above the treetops. I laugh wildly, and I'm sure it would leave an impression of hysteria, if anyone were about to hear it. Down here, it's silver light, but any fool can see that's a gourd-moon, a faerie-moon. You'll stay home tonight, if you have any sense of self-preservation. Go dancing tonight, and no one will see you for a hundred years.


	2. What Sarah Saw

My cat is a prince and the mop bucket speaks to me.

The mop bucket is banana-yellow, a stubborn, cranky creature that I call Ephraim. It growls at me sometimes, when I take it out to clean the floors at night, telling me I've woken it from a nap and grumbling about Children of Men and their lack of consideration for other beings. I try to explain that it's not my fault, but Ephraim pointedly ignores me and eventually I learn it is best to say nothing and let it get over its bad mood.

Some nights, it will, and after a period of silence, it will call to me. It tries to sound grumpy, but I can hear the tinge of affection.

"Daughter of Men," it says, softly. It calls all of us that. Ephraim pretends to be gruff, but I know it likes me. The others who work here don't know how to listen properly.

I smile to myself and pretend not to hear, mopping near the bread shelves. Ephraim rumbles to itself, half a sigh and half a purr, and calls a little louder to me. This time I kneel next to it - as if I am tying my shoelace - so we can talk.

Ephraim is a simple-enough being, but the cat is more complicated. He sleeps on the end of my bed, but on some nights, rare, special nights, he transforms in his sleep and I feel his heartbeat against my back. He is dark, this prince, and beautiful, and old, unimaginably old. He does not tell me where he came from, or why he came to me, and I do not ask. Secretly, I imagine what he did to incur such a spell. Refused pity to a blind beggarman? Scorned the love of a desert witch? But he lets my personal demons alone, and I in turn afford him the same respect.

Sometimes, in the moonlight, we kiss; sweet, longing kisses that speak of things lost, never to be regained. We kiss because we do not know what else to do with our tangled limbs and shared body heat; because we have each other; we kiss, but do no more. We do not tempt the powers that be.

I can taste the sorrow on his skin, but he holds me in his arms and whispers that I have beautiful eyes, that I am strong and good and free, that nothing can change me unless I wish it.

Sometimes he almost makes me believe him.

It snows on December 5th. I am working, Ephraim is grumbling, and the rugs are purring in satisfaction as I run a broom across their backs. I take Ephraim outside to empty out the mop water, and something flickers. I shake my head, convinced it is my imagination. All summer long, I saw flickers, shadows where there were none. The goblins have left me alone, of late.

But as I turn to go, it happens again. A white form - there! - and then a fraction of a second later, it's gone. I pause, eyes narrowed against the dark. Nothing.

Most people think I'm a little mad. (The words over the doors, the iron cookware, the silver spells painted around the windows, the dried herbs tacked and hung everywhere across my ceiling.) Some days I think they're right.

I turn and begin to trudge back towards the door, Ephraim rattling behind me, a steady stream of muttering under its breath. And then I see something blowing past me in the wind. Glitter.

"No," I say quietly. Then again. "NO!" This time, it is loud, almost a shriek, and my voice is suddenly hoarse and ragged, nearly cracking. I haven't spoken that loudly in a long time. People in the parking lot turn to stare. "No," I whisper, so softly only I and he whom I address can hear. I have no doubt he is listening.

I go back inside, and in a matter of minutes, there are snowflakes floating down to cover everything.

I know what I saw. He is coming.


End file.
